Frame counting is an often misunderstood skill practiced by vast numbers of the world’s best competitive fighting game players. It involves learning the animation frame counts of all the available moves, and comparing the relative speed and power of every attack, so you know instantly how to respond to the punches and kicks coming in from your rival.

In most modern games there are 60 frames of animation per second, and every move is broken down into three sections: activation, execution and recovery. In theory, a really great player will be able to spot a rival’s intentions during the activation phase (the milliseconds it takes for a character to bring an attacking move into motion) and select a counter move that reaches execution faster.

While arguments persist around how conscious – or practical – frame-counting really is during gameplay, those that employ the technique have a significant advantage with regards to accuracy and timing. Frame-counting at the top-end serves to highlight what it takes to become a respectable fighter player. Just getting off the starting line and evolving from beginner to a merely capable player can take significant genre devotion. It’s a chasm that makes represents a significant challenge for developers of the form. Just how do you how deliver an authentic arcade experience that satisfies both the devotee, and the nostalgic gamer who remembers jamming 10-pence pieces into a Street Fighter 2 cabinet, but not the esoteric strings of button presses that make up most combos?

Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite endeavours to answer that question, by striving to give beginners a fast track to competent play, in an experience promising enough depth for the frame-counters to embrace it as part of the global competitive fighting game scene. Sparring with an early build of Infinite, which brings together characters from the Marvel universe with icons from games like Street Fighter and Darkstalkers, it is clear Capcom has applied a seemingly simple solution to a complicated problem. Compared to many fighters of recent years, Infinite is a devoutly pure, uncomplicated offering. The screen isn’t cluttered with too many meters, multipliers and symbols, and the control system makes several concessions with the novice in mind.

“The Marvel vs. Capcom series, in its 20 years, has gotten more complicated, and a things were becoming a little daunting for those new players coming into the game,” admits producer Mike Evans. “We could see that had happened when we set out to develop Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite, so in preproduction we took a step back and decided to see what could be done to keep the same DNA, and to keep the potential for complexity of strategy, while welcoming new players.”

The result is a brawler that complies absolutely with the arcade template – something many players look for in a genre where the constraints of convention are celebrated – albeit with a number of shortcuts that allow beginners to taste the game at higher levels.

Take Infinite’s light punch combo, which triggers an ornate volley of strikes through simply repeatedly hitting a single button. When it connects, as it usually does, rivals are knocked back along the ground, before being flung upwards, where the combo continues in the air. It provides an archetypical example of the distinct way in which the Marvel vs Capcom is played.

“That’s at the very heart of where the fun and the strategy has always been in the Marvel vs Capcom Series; those air combos and movement up and down the screen,” explains associate producer Peter Rosas, himself an accomplished competitive arcade fighter who climbed the ranks from player to Capcom employee. “So we’re giving beginner players access to that early on; giving them a sense of how they should be playing.”

Similarly, Infinite adopts a universal combo string; a fairly complex series of button presses that are common to every character, and when successfully entered, deliver a sizeable dent in a competitor’s health stocks. Master it with one fighter – perhaps a favourite like Ryu – and the opportunity to embrace new characters and be immediately capable is realised. The idea is that if you can do it with Ryu, you can do it with every character Infinite has to offer.

“We don’t want to put new players in the kiddie pool, though,” Rosas asserts. “Those are default features in the game, universal to everyone playing. So if you’re using something like the universal combo string, you’re playing the real game; you’re just getting slightly early access to a feel for what it’s like to play at a higher level.”

The focus on accessibility has also broken with convention where controllers are concerned. Any arcade player with a sense of pride will gleefully tell you that they prefer to use a stick controller. Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite, however, has been designed with a rather more available tool at the front of its creators’ minds; the humble gamepad.

“We had to make sure this game played well on a gamepad,” Rosas confirms. “Two punch buttons and two kick buttons made a lot of sense for the game, and for a game pad. There’s only two other buttons; one for what we’ve called Infinity Stone moves, and one for character switching, because this is a 2v2 tag game. That made it very digestible, but there’s room there for depth, and it works perfectly on a gamepad. You can still play on a stick – and play well – but we didn’t want players to feel they had to invest in a stick to get the best experience.”

It certainly doesn’t feel that the controls of Infinite have been pulled from an arcade cabinet and forced on to a pad, though for experienced players, a stick still does seem the most instinctive input device. What is apparent from the preview build, which offered a single, streamlined arcade mode, is that the fighting experience is smooth, fast and fluid. There’s also a new emphasis on narrative, and while none was available in the hands-on time provided, Capcom has promised a game that will give far more detail on exactly why comic book heroes and video game characters are trading blows.

Will Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite meet the standards of the hardcore player, and become a stalwart of the competitive events? Only time in the hands of the frame-counters will truly answer that question. But Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite already impresses, and if it really is possible to span the divide between button-mashers and frame-counters, this seems like where it will happen.